Figure 5.

Possible outcomes of multipolar mitoses in cancer. A subset of cells with multipolar spindles carry mitosis to completion, resulting in highly aneuploidy cells, some with abnormal centrosome number (A). Others fail cytokinesis resulting in giant multinucleated polyploid cells, often with supernumerary centrosomes (B). Some cells exit mitosis in a process termed “mitotic slippage” and become polyploid cells with supernumerary centrosomes (F), or apoptose in the subsequent G1 phase (E). Yet others undergo mitotic catastrophe (death in mitosis) (C). Finally, most cells with multipolar mitosis, after significant delay, reconfigure their multipolar spindles into bipolar spindles resulting in (mostly) normal or abnormal (merothelic, synthelic chromosome) chromosome segregation (D). The thickness of the arrows in the figure intends to provide an estimate of the frequency of these events in cancer cells.